Using open source frameworks to help Palm live on via re-purposed Nexus devices.

There's an old saying that all good things must come to end, but that’s not always the case in the world of technology. A year after webOS was officially shut down, HP opened it up in hopes that third-party developers would continue development. And sure enough, the Open webOS project, established by HP to help further develop the operating system, is thriving—despite the prospect of having no new hardware.

In March 2012, a month after HP announced it was opening up webOS for development, a group of outside developers quietly began investigating the idea of porting webOS to other mobile devices. Many of these developers had been active participants in the webOS Internals group, a homebrew developer organization that formed in June 2009 (shortly after the "Konami code" was discovered, opening up the developer mode in Palm's webOS). So when HP decided webOS was no longer commercially viable, the team immediately wondered if webOS would eventually be set free for developers. “It did not appear that [HP was] going to be creating any new devices,” Tom King, project leader of the webOS Ports group, told Ars. “I think we all liked webOS, what it was, and what it potentially could be in its open source life. We realized that it was a minority OS and, at the time, there really wasn't any other good open source option available to us. Tizen and Meego were having its share of problems finding foothold anywhere.”

The webOS Internals team began working with HP to help release the Community Edition of webOS for the TouchPad. The objective of the Community Edition was to get the "community" code out in the wild, giving developers a chance to familiarize themselves with how the TouchPad hardware worked in conjunction with the webOS software. The idea was the practice time they had with this version would enable them to do more with Open webOS once it was officially released. But this also gave King and the team an opportunity to play with the open source version of the code before it was released to other developers.

Enlarge/ HP released the Community Edition release to allow developers to learn how the platform and hardware worked together so that they might apply it to future tinkering in Open webOS 1.0.

In June 2012, the Community Edition finally went live with the help of the webOS Internals group, and soon after King and his team formally introduced themselves as the webOS Ports team. Next they banded together with folks from OpenEmbedded, a project that provides coding assistance and helps other teams build frameworks for packaging up Linux distributions for embedded systems. They began looking at Android devices as potential targets for the ports.

The fusion team focused on choosing devices that were easy to develop for, featured unlocked bootloaders and redistributable drivers, or could be modified with essential system software available under open source licenses. King and the team wanted to find a device that already featured code for what they couldn't recreate themselves. “There was a large process where we were examining [Android] devices and looking at code that was provided for them,” said King. “Android is a Linux kernel, so there was a lot of work already done in that respect ahead of time. We didn't have to reinvent the wheel.”

In September, after the 1.0 release of Open webOS—a separate release from the Community Edition—the team finally showed off a pre-release Alpha of the software running on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. “[It was a] reasonable phone, performance and cost wise, so we made the decision to pursue that particular device,” explained King. After that release went live to the public, the team went back to work getting other variables of the operating system working with the device (like Wi-Fi). There were “a lot of people doing a lot of work to make this happen,” King added.

Today: webOS in its infancy

In the last two months, the webOS Ports project has hit quite a few milestones, including working builds for two additional devices: the Samsung Series 7 Slate and the Asus Nexus 7. The Ports project even has 16 people currently working on it globally. For now, the webOS Port runs alongside Android, but future releases will allow tablets to run webOS instead of Android. There’s still a lot of work to be done, however.

One of the biggest challenges for the team is 3D acceleration: when an application is launched and acceleration is engaged, the application fails to get a framebuffer. This in turn causes it to crash. “[Android] uses a single frame buffer, and webOS originally used two frame buffers,” explained King. There are other minor architectural differences between webOS and Android, so the webOS Ports team has a lot of work ahead of it.

On the plus side, HP is providing some support for projects like webOS Ports. Though not sponsored by HP, the company has donated servers for webOS Ports and officially approves any changes the team makes to Open webOS. Also, the project has a “No ETA” philosophy—no one is allowed to announce an estimated time of arrival for anything they’re working on, nor will they comment on any projects they are working on until they actually work. That's why webOS Ports did not make its official debut until four months after its formation.

Although one of the bigger goals for the webOS Ports project is to get a fully-functional beta into the hands of users, King also wants to show the usefulness of frameworks like OpenEmbedded. He believes it's proof that a hefty number of resources isn't always needed get projects like his out the door. “We’re an open source group, we’re not that many people,” he said. “If we can make an effort in X number of months and be able to get things even further along with even fewer people than a full time porting project can do, that’s a good thing.” He added the cost of moving back and forth between platforms in development has usually been very high, but the webOS Ports project proved it doesn't have to be so.

The end goal, however, is to get more users interested in webOS and usher in the new generation of Web developers. “There’s a generation of people that know Javascript and Web scripting and are developing apps based on that because they already know it,” said King. “The consequence is that we need to have a platform that those things run well on, and that they’re designed for.”

To King, this is precisely what webOS was initially designed for. And he still feels it's among the roles webOS fills best.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

There's a lot I like about WebOS, but I'm afraid that without mfg support from a significant manufacturer, this will be just another Haiku. :\

I worry about that too, but I haven't been willing to give it up yet. Still not willing to live in a walled garden or an environment designed by an advertising company.

And I do like being able to modify apps to suit me better.

I got one of the never-released Pre3's so the desire to update hardware is not quite as strong as it would have been with a Pre or Pre2, but I figure some time around the end of this year I will be deciding where to go next. I trust that WebOS Ports or someone else will have given me a decent WebOS option by then.

I will say, though, my next tablet will not be running a mobile OS. That was a nice transitional state but now that a full computer in tablet form is possible, that is my preference. Mobile OS is for phones.

My wife loves her HP Touchpad and uses it all day. No android, just webOS. She has occasional issues with losing the network, and the battery life isn't what it once was, but other than that it's been great.

This is a nice side-benefit to the Nexus program: that it's possible to have reasonably powerful, widely-available and open hardware for things like this and Ubuntu Mobile. It's nice to have the choice, and to see this kind of effort and results in an era when, carriers and OEMs are EOL'ing phones as soon as they hit the shelves and the whole platforms get Osbourne'ed at their apex.

Side note: much of what made WebOS nice to use exists on the BlackBerry PlayBook and (maybe) on the new BB10 phones, so this paradigm isn't dead yet.

@sprockkets: It wasn't that Palm was too dumb to succeed. It just didn't have the resources to do it on its own. HP had them and had the people to back it. Had Mark Hurd not been caught up in a scandal, webOS might have gotten the attention and funding it needed to come in as a strong third player in the tablet market.

I used webOS on a Palm Pixi Plus, which was not the best of hardware. But it was some of the best UI design I'd ever seen. The hardware supported the UI beautifully — better than Apple and Android phones support their respective UIs. Everything was so fluid (for a 600 MHz processor), and it was easy to do… well, everything.

The letdown for me was always app support. There were hardly any third party apps, and even some of the built-in ones were less than what they should have been. If I find webOS running big-name, high-quality apps, I'll come running with a fistful of money.

I loved so much about the WebOS UI on my TouchPad. I continued to use it well after many had installed Cyanogen Mod 9 on theirs. I finally succumbed to temptation last year basically for one reason: Chrome. Chrome on Android at this point is just drastically more functional than the WebOS browser. I still prefer the WebOS Facebook, email and Tapatalk clients in a lot of ways. Still, the difference between the dying WebOS app store and the Google Play store is pretty staggering. If only the multitasking was as smooth as WebOS...

The main question though is : Does the world really need another web concentric OS ? In the meantime we have all learned that the "infamous" ecosystem is what's it all about. Can webOS ever develop an attracting ecosystem ? Even RIM had to send out one of its very best men to convince developers to code for RIM.If you make a living from coding apps you can't take any risks. Therefore betting on an almost unknown mobile OS is pretty close to playing Russian roulette.

"I worry about that too, but I haven't been willing to give it up yet. Still not willing to live in a walled garden or an environment designed by an advertising company."

They sell search results and web services, I bet you've watched TV for the past 30 years, no bigger advertising driven-controlled environment in the world. Bet you still watch TV and have a huge cable package, good luck with all that product placement.

I was disappointed when I found out that Open webOS would not come to the Touchpad. I'd really been looking forward to seeing some continued development on that platform. The Touchpad is great, but... it could become even better.

I loved so much about the WebOS UI on my TouchPad. I continued to use it well after many had installed Cyanogen Mod 9 on theirs. I finally succumbed to temptation last year basically for one reason: Chrome. Chrome on Android at this point is just drastically more functional than the WebOS browser.

The browser is the big reason I'm considering installing Cyanogen Mod on my Touchpad. Browsing is one of the things I use the Touchpad for, and the current browser alternatives are... not great.

The good thing is there are true open source mobile OSes are being developed this very moment. I am sick and tired of the blind worshipping of Google's propaganda on the internet. We need a true open source OS running on phones without any bullshit corporate agenda behind it.

WebOS, to me, is a very pretty OS. That said, my Touchpad has Cyanogen Mod 9 on it as my primary OS for the simple reason that it has the apps I need. Even if WebOS had a working Netflix app, I'd probably use it more. But, it's the "killer app" that's missing (unless I'm missing something, lol), and that keeps me on CM9.

Honestly, the multitasking in ICS/JB is very WebOS-like. I am glad that they took inspiration from the card-view for multitasking. On my Nexus 7, it's just "tap the button and swap between running thumbnails". You even swipe them away to close them like on WebOS. It's not a direct port or anything but it's definitely the same idea.

“There’s a generation of people that know Javascript and Web scripting and are developing apps based on that because they already know it,” said King. “The consequence is that we need to have a platform that those things run well on, and that they’re designed for.”

How how he will feel when Ubuntu for Phones is released, how will people feel about web apps between the two platforms?

Also, the project has a “No ETA” philosophy—no one is allowed to announce an estimated time of arrival for anything they’re working on, nor will they comment on any projects they are working on until they actually work.

This I like. How many companies have done: "Stop! Wait for us! We're the market leaders"? Thin clients like the aforementioned stick pc's might be the ticket for OpenWebOS.

"I worry about that too, but I haven't been willing to give it up yet. Still not willing to live in a walled garden or an environment designed by an advertising company."

They sell search results and web services, I bet you've watched TV for the past 30 years, no bigger advertising driven-controlled environment in the world. Bet you still watch TV and have a huge cable package, good luck with all that product placement.

Nope. No TV, no cable. Although being exposed to product placement and other forms of advertising is totally different from being tracked.

There are also private search engines like Ixquick and duckduckgo.

In practice, you can't erase all traces of yourself. It's not possible, and it's not my goal. What is my goal is to limit the unnecessary tracking, and to avoid putting all my information in the same place. The latter is what Android really fails at. Combine your email, your schedule, your browsing, your location, and more and package it all neatly up for one company. I prefer to distribute these. Not to mention Google is the only one that actually scans the contents of your email, that particular issue is easily avoided by not using Gmail.

The only negative aspect of this that I can think of is that I'm way too used to using WebOS on my Touchpad. I would sit there trying to swipe up from the "bottom" bezel on the Nexus 7 to bring up the cards and end up crying out in frustration when it doesn't work! WebOS is a nice little mobile OS though. My only real complaint about it (other than the obvious lack of development support) is how the default browser runs all "tabs" as (what appears to be) separate instances of the browser.

Basically, none. Firefox OS might run Enyo in some capacity, but its toolkits, JavaScript interpreter, and rendering engine are completely different, and the shell and chrome both look and work radically differently than their webOS predecessors.

Great things could be said about the UI and the conditions that is was made (very short development time). My parents were given a touchpad with CM 10 and WebOS. They know how to boot into both...they choose WebOS. They say it's easier to deal with multiple programs open and just like how it's more unified. I keep harping on them that saving bookmarks and the such can't be backed up. Well they had a problem that was user created...(they deleted files from Adobe Reader's program they shouldn't have) and I had to reset it. We are talking system and program files. Sigh...I asked...

EVERYTHING was restored from the server at Palm. Even bookmarks and cookies that kept them logged into youtube. About the only thing it did miss was the PDFs they had saved from e-mail. E-Mail settings and even programs they had loaded (and not loaded) were saved in their state. If they had once downloaded a program and removed it...it didn't install again. Only the apps they had installed at that time.

If anything..I would like to see Microsoft pick up those UI guys ...and finally get a Windows version that is better than their half-assed attempt ...Metro.

WebOS was/is a thing of beauty. I pulled out my old pre 3 last night and played with it. The UI is so superior to my galaxy S3! Everyone is copying webos to one degree or another these days but its still the best! If they get this up and running, I'll come running!